Andina, a high-end Peruvian restaurant, was linked to a norovirus outbreak at the beginning of the month that sickened more than 30 people.Bruce Ely/The Oreognian

For Jim and Cary Fairchild, Andina was a go-to special-occasion restaurant, a place to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries or impress out-of-town guests.

It was just such a special occasion -- to celebrate paying off a daughter's student loan -- that brought them to the Pearl District Peruvian restaurant on a recent Friday night. The Southwest Portland couple dined on spicy passion fruit martinis, seafood ceviche and Jim's must-order: bright red piquillo peppers stuffed with quinoa and serrano ham.

They didn't feel ill until after 1 a.m. the following night. Jim suspected a food cart they'd eaten at that day. He called the Multnomah County Health Department to report the illness.

The Fairchilds were among more than 30 people who contracted norovirus -- the most common form of food poisoning -- after eating at Andina on March 1 or 2. After a few nights filled with flopsweat and heavyweight bathroom bouts, all recovered. But for Andina, the shadow cast by the outbreak could last far longer.

If any Portland restaurant is positioned to survive a public relations disaster, it's Andina. The Oregonian's 2005 Restaurant of the Year is one of the busiest -- if not the busiest -- in Oregon, with the same weekend crowds as nationally known hotspots such as Pok Pok or Toro Bravo, but triple the capacity. Over the two days when the outbreak occurred, the restaurant's 173 employees served more than 1,300 people.

Yet today, Andina's reputation hangs in the balance. How the restaurant management reacts and, more importantly, how the public perceives that reaction, will go a long way to determining their future.

Food poisoning -- particularly norovirus -- is the live bullet in the restaurant version of Russian roulette. The disease sickens more than 21 million Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 70,000 of those people seek hospital treatment.

No restaurant is immune. Just before the outbreak at Andina, more than 60 people fell ill at Noma, the sleek Copenhagen restaurant named "World's Best Restaurant" three years in a row by Restaurant Magazine.

For most people, norovirus symptoms, including vomiting and diarrhea, fade on their own after a few days. The black mark on a restaurant's reputation can last far longer, with as much potential for damage to the brand as a Nike athlete caught doping or a Salem sex scandal.

Gary Conkling, a professor at Willamette University's Atkinson Graduate School of Management and president of CFM Strategic Communications Inc., said all businesses should have response plans for just such a worst-case scenario. For restaurants, that means knowing who to contact in the wake of a breach in food safety.

"You need to be forthcoming," Conkling says. "You can't pretend like it didn't happen, or that maybe you didn't know about it. Being proactive in communications is about confidence-building. And if the actions match, that's what people remember."

Mark Weiner, a go-to political fixer in Portland for heavy-hitters including former mayor Sam Adams, enjoyed a meal at Andina last week. Yet when he heard about the recent outbreak, his thoughts went not to his stomach, but to what he does best: brand management and damage control.

"You want to be seen as a restaurant that takes this really seriously and has the highest standards of cleanliness," Weiner said. "Occasionally you can get a problem, but it's an aberration. What you don't want to happen is what's happening to Carnival Cruise lines."

"They had the Triumph which was a bad situation, then they had another cruise ship (Friday) and they had to fly everyone home. One is an unfortunate circumstance, two, I'm going to find someplace else."

But last week's outbreak wasn't Andina's first. Last April, six people fell ill after eating at the restaurant. The cause was confirmed to be norovirus, according to the Multnomah County Health Department.

The restaurant had said they were unaware of the earlier outbreak. On Friday, general manager Jels McCaulay said investigators had visited the restaurant in April, but said they were searching for salmonella.

The Fairchilds might be Andina's ideal customers, dining at the restaurant about four times a year over the past decade. But when Jim Fairchild read McCaulay claiming restaurant staff had called everyone who ate at Andina on March 1 and 2, it came as a surprise.

"No one had contacted me, and I'm on public record making a complaint," Fairchild said. "I'm one of the easier ones to find."

That day, he fired off an email to McCaulay and to The Oregonian.

"He's since called me," Fairchild said. "I feel that he was sincere."

Andina opened in 2003 at Northwest 13th Avenue and Glisan Street, bringing a fresh take on Latin American cuisine to a city that seemed starving for it. The restaurant quickly grew, gobbling up basement boutiques and an upstairs bar and converting them into private dining spaces. Over time, the restaurant more than doubled in size.

In September, Andina's owners, the Platt family, bought the restaurant's three-story brick building for $3.8 million.

Sitting in a tile-lined private dining room in the restaurant's basement, owners John Platt, Doris Rodriguez de Platt and son Victor Platt said the outbreak hit close to home: John and Doris ate at the restaurant on March 2, and both became ill.

After the outbreak, staff cleaned the restaurant with bleach and discarded potentially contaminated food items. Management imposed a mandatory three-day waiting period for staff showing signs of illness and re-enforced the importance of frequent hand-washing.

"We aren't putting in place a new set of rules, since we've always followed the rules," John Platt said. "But what we do have now is a much higher appreciation of why those rules are there."

So far, the restaurant hasn't seen a drop in business.

"There have been a small number of cancellations that we know were directly involved with the outbreak," McCaulay said. But "those spots have been snapped up by people wanting reservations."

John Platt noted that norovirus, sometimes called the "cruise ship" virus, is more likely to occur in larger restaurants. And despite the outbreak, the family has already heard from loyal customers who say they'll keep coming back.

"One of the things that's been heartening has been how many people have come up to us to tell us they support us," John Platt said. "That just makes us want to make sure that this never happens again."

Long-term, the restaurant's prospects hinge on whether people believe that it has customers' best interests at heart, Willamette University's Conkling said.

"In my classes, I tell people that you can turn a crisis into an opportunity if you're up front, you're credible, and you put your customer -- in this case the patrons at your restaurant -- first," Conkling said.

"There's plenty of evidence that people will forgive a misstep. They're less forgiving when people don't own it or deal with it straight."

Weiner, the damage-control consultant, agreed.

"If there were some gross negligence on the part of the restaurant, that's a problem," he said. "Generally people understand that sometimes (stuff) happens."

As for the Fairchilds, Cary probably won't return to Andina. "As sick as she was, I don't think she's eager to go through that again," her husband said.

Jim, on the other hand, is willing to give the restaurant another shot.

"If it were a more marginal place, and it looked dirty, I might say, 'I don't want to go there again.' But I think Andina is the kind of place where they're going to clean everything up and make sure the staff is properly trained. I'm willing to give them another opportunity to prove that."